MISS UNIVERSE 1929 - Lisl Goldarbeiter

MISS UNIVERSE 1929 - Lisl Goldarbeiter. A Queen in Wien

A film by Péter Forgács

CREDITS

A/NL 2006, 70 min, DigiBeta, stereo Film available in Dutch, English, German and Hungarian language director Péter Forgács family films Marci Tenczer editor Péter Sass music László Melis advisor András Forgách researchers Éva Frank, Péter Forgács, Elisabeth Streit, Márton Kurutz, Kirsten Landwehr musicians Balázs Bujtor, György Déri, András Horn, István Kerek, Zoltán Lengyel, Ernyei László, Márta Melis singer Apollónia Szolnoki music recording Rainer Puschner, Stephan Kolber, Gábor Juhos, Ádám Matz dubbing mixer Tamás Zányi filmarchives The Austrian Film Museum Private Photo and Film Archive Filmarchiv Austria WIFAR Archiv Klub der Kinoamateure Österreichs Archiv Kusatz / Kofler FITU Hungarian Film Archives Forum des Images Film Images Gaumont Pathe Archives lineproducer Austria Peter Janecek postproduction assistant Austria Fritz Ofner production Hungary For-Creation Bt. produced by LUMEN FILM, Amsterdam and MISCHIEF FILMS, Vienna in co-production with

VPRO-television production VPRO Vera de Vries commisioned by Maarten Schmidt and Thomas Doebele

ZDF in cooperation with Arte commissioned by Doris Hepp

ORF commissioned by Franz Grabner

MTV Hungarian Television Corporation

YLE / TV1 with the support of Filmfonds Wien Fernsehfonds Austria Motion Picture Public Foundation of Hungary co-producers Ralph Wieser, Georg Misch producer Cesar Messemaker

SYNOPSIS

A personal documentary film about the life of Lisl Goldarbeiter – the first and only Austrian Miss Universe – and her cousin Marci, who kept his camera trained on her throughout his life. A little film about big-time fame and eternal love, set against the background of 1930s Vienna.

MISS UNIVERSE 1929 – Lisl Goldarbeiter. A Queen in Wien is made out of archive footage completely. Péter Forgács tells a story about beauty, love and history just as well as of war and catastrophe. His challenge was to make history visible, noticeable behind and in the Jewish Goldarbeiter/Tenczer family story.

Lisl Goldarbeiter and Marci Tenczer – both born in 1908 - were cousins and knew each other since early childhood. The Goldarbeiters lived in Vienna and belonged to the Austrian wing of a large Austro-Hungarian Jewish family. The Tenczer's lived in Szeged, and formed the Hungarian wing. The family ties between Vienna and Szeged never ceased.

Marci moved to Vienna in 1926, to study. The first anti-Semitic law in Europe, the Hungarian Numerous Clauses of 1922, made it impossible for Jews to enter a University in Hungary. Marci lived in the house of the Goldarbeiters and studied at the Technical University from 1926-1936.

Marci secretly loved his cousin Lisl. He started to make films of her, her family and Vienna shortly after his arrival. He was very poor but succeeded in saving cash for his film hobby by walking the city, instead of taking the tram. In 1929, without telling anybody, Marci caused Lisl's entry into the world of beauty … and she became world famous. Lisl had just left high school when Marci read an advertisement in a newspaper in which girls were asked to apply for the Miss Austria beauty contest. Marci found her extremely beautiful and without telling anybody he applied her. This act would change the life of the modest Goldarbeiter family forever. Lisl became Vice-Miss Europe and was later crowned Miss Universe in Texas. Her life changed totally. Hollywood offers bombarded her but she chose to stay in Vienna, dismissing publicity.

Lisl married bon vivant Fritz Spielmann in 1930. Marci remained single, he waited for Lisl. Because Fritz Spielmann refused to help her family during World War II they separated. Lisl and Marci experienced disaster during war time. Many of their family members didn’t survive the Holocaust which caused very tight bonds between the two cousins. In 1949 Marci got what he had been waiting for so long. Marci and Lisl married in Szeged (what a reunion!) happily and silently lived over the revolution of 1956, the terror and consolidation of communism.

Lisl died in 1996. Marci passed away in 2003, shortly after he had told us every detail about his live and the live of his own Miss Universe - Lisl Goldarbeiter.

„In the past twenty years, I have found out that old amateur films are the unconscious diaries of life, of history. These film diaries tell us something about what we can no longer touch or feel, and also show us the other side of the official history. …. What interests me about old amateur films, is the magic, the mystery of the images. I would not call them innocent, rather naive. I am interested in the beauty of the images and the stories behind them.” (Péter Forgács).

PÉTER FORGÁCS

Born in 1950 Performance-artist and film-maker. Lives and works in Budapest.

Filmography

2005 El Perro Negro

2004 Mutual Analysis

2003 Do you really love me? The HungAryan installation

2003 Der Kaiser auf dem Spaziergang - light & image project

2002 The Bishop’s Garden - Private Hungary 14

2001 A Bibó Reader - Private Hungary 13

1999 Angelos’ Film

1998 The Danube Exodus

1997 The Maelstrom - A Family Chronic

1997 Kádár’s Kiss - Private Hungary 12

1997 Class Lot - Private Hungary 11

1996 Free Fall - Private Hungary 10

1996 Pauer Pseudo

1996 The Land of Nothing - Private Hungary 9

1994 Meanwhile Somewhere 1940-43... 1994 The Notes of a Lady - Private Hungary 8

1994 Hungarian Totem (video - 26min)

1993 Conversations on Psychoanalysis - documentary series 5/5 1 Freud & Vienna 2 Sándor Ferenczi & the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis 3 The Psychoanalytic View of Man 4 Psychoanalysis & Society 5 Psychoanalysis as Therapy

1993 Simply Happy - with Albert Wulffers

1993 Culture Shavings

1992 Bourgeoisie Dictionary - Private Hungary 7

1992 Wittgenstein Tractatus - INTERLUDE series

1991 Arizona diary - with poet György Petri

1991 Photographed by László Dudás - Private Hungary 6

1991 D-FILM - Private Hungary 5

1991 Márai Herbal - INTERLUDE series

1990 The Diary of Mr. N. - Private Hungary 4

1989 Either - Or - Private Hungary 3

1989 Dusi & Jenõ - Private Hungary 2

1988 The Bartos Family - Private Hungary 1

1987 Episodes from the Life of Professor M.F.

1986 The Portrait of Leopold Szondi

1985 Spinoza Rückwertz

1985 Iron Age

1985 Golden Age video

1978 I See That I Look

Art works in art collections Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, USA Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Hungary

Presse: Nicole Wolf Goethegasse 1 1010 Wien +43 1 5852324 25 [email protected]